


mild fantasy violence, threat, romance

by concernedlily



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Season/Series 07, the voltron show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 05:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15701193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concernedlily/pseuds/concernedlily
Summary: “What better way to confirm Voltron’s survival and advertise Earth’s new status as a safe trading post and refuge than a galaxy-wide TV show?”





	mild fantasy violence, threat, romance

“Keith!” Coran called and Keith stopped frowning up at the airlock - it was all very well getting Black in and out of the Atlas here on the ground but he still wasn’t convinced there was enough clearance for a re-entry at velocity, like, say, in the middle of a _massive space battle_ \- and turned to greet him. “You’re coming to the viewing party tonight, aren’t you?”

“The what?” Keith said. 

***

“I can’t believe you agreed to this,” he said accusingly. 

Shiro looked guilty. He said, “He didn’t exactly ask. How bad can it be, though? Really?”

“Shiro, last time you guys fought an actual monster in front of a live studio audience.”

Shiro winced. “You saw that?”

“Even the Blades have downtime,” Kolivan said, coming through the doors of the auditorium. He was carrying a family-sized bag of Cheetos. It clashed horribly with his skin. 

“What are you doing here?” Keith said, hating him. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss this,” Kolivan said. “And Krolia insisted. Is Princess Allura playing you again, Keith?”

“ _No_ ,” Keith said. Colleen Holt waved at him from across the room, where Pidge and Hunk were setting up their new intergalactic cable TV. He paused and asked Shiro, “Is she?”

“I don’t think so,” Shiro said. “Coran said this time he’d brought in the professionals.”

“Well, I for one think it’s going to be great,” Lance said, sailing past them with a snotty kid on each hip and the rest of his giant family behind him, all proudly clutching glossy publicity posters announcing THE VOLTRON SHOW: THE EXCITING RETURN!!!

“I agree,” Allura said sunnily. “What better way to confirm Voltron’s survival and advertise Earth’s new status as a safe trading post and refuge than a galaxy-wide TV show?” 

She had her arm linked through Lance’s mom’s: Keith didn’t know what was going on with Allura and Lance, but whatever it was Lance’s family had absorbed her like a noisy, obnoxious, loving sponge. She seemed happy, though. Keith was pretty sure yet another nephew or niece was responsible for her lopsided white braid, blue plastic flowers woven through it haphazardly. 

“Et tu, Brute?” Shiro said to Veronica, bringing up the rear of her family. 

“Sorry, Captain,” she said, laughing, so at least Shiro’s crew had about as much respect as Keith’s horrible team. Keith sighed and stole a handful of her popcorn. 

***

It wasn’t too awful, Keith guessed. He was being played by a Galran about two feet taller than Keith, in a black wig that looked like it was made out of an actual bird’s nest, but it could’ve been worse: the creature playing Hunk had tentacles and Lance was furiously complaining to Coran about his character missing about half the shots he took, with a laugh track over it. Shiro had gotten off comparatively lightly, played by what was maybe another half-Galran, green skin and a lot of five o’clock shadow and a cotton-wool poof where Shiro’s white streak had been. The special effects weren’t bad, though, the lions and Voltron looking pretty lifelike. 

Repelling Sendak and the Galra from Earth had been such a relentless struggle, so many desperation moves: Keith’s adrenaline-drenched memory of it already had an unreality to it, like a photo with some points in vivid over-focus and the edges blurred and black. Seeing it happening to someone else onscreen, people who were supposed to be them, just heightened that until he wasn’t totally sure what was fact and what parts had been added by Coran and his colleagues.

His eyes burned towards the end. For a minute the shitty production values and the crappy acting of the guy playing him didn’t matter: he was there again, the lions lifting the robeast high into the air, knowing they’d be caught up in the blast. Shiro’s hand found his between their chairs and Keith clung to him, glad not to be alone. 

***

“You don’t look much like you do on TV,” the Olkari kid said. He sounded pretty mad about it. 

Keith waved the engineers to deposit the latest magic whatever Pidge was building into the Garrison’s new battle cruisers into a corner of Atlas’s main hold and said, “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

***

“How are things?” Krolia said, giving Keith a sidelong glance he couldn’t quite interpret. 

“Fine?” he offered. 

“Anything you want to talk about?” she said delicately. 

Keith ran through things in his mind. Shiro was fine. The lions were fine, so Voltron was fine. Earth was fine. The Blades were fine: the old base he was investigating with her today even seemed to still have some glimmers of functionality. 

“No?” he said. “I mean. I’m always happy to talk, Mom.”

“Good,” she said. “Me too.”

“Great,” he said. 

They got through another two rooms, the systems waking sluggishly for Krolia’s knife. 

“Anything you wanted to talk about,” she said. “Anything at all, you can. Any… _one_?”

“Is this about Acxa?” he said suspiciously. “Because I don’t care what Lance says, the acid stomach of a weblum is not a meet-cute.”

He got what Lance was talking about, of course; he didn’t have Lance’s thing of thinking any girl who even glanced at him was flirting, but he got the way Acxa looked at him. Selfishly, he hoped she never said anything about it, just waited until it went away, which he was pretty sure it would once she actually got to know him. 

“It absolutely is not about Acxa,” she said waspishly, then paused. “Unless it should be?”

“No!”

***

A pack of young girls was staring at them, eyes on stalks - literally - and giggling.

“Leave this to me,” Lance said loftily. “Just a bit of hero worship. Hi there, ladies, stay cool, there’s plenty of old Lancey-Lance to go around -”

“Hi Keith!” one of them blurted, her friends nudging each other at her daring.

“What?” Lance said, offended. “Him?”

“You’re our favourite,” one of the others sighed. “You’re so cute together!” said another.

“What?” said her dad, “Him?” and Keith shrank back as its eyes extended out, slowly, and peered at him. “Go inside, girls.”

That was kind of rude, in Keith’s opinion, but he wasn’t going to argue. At least they’d stopped gawking at him.

***

“Wow, that’s… just your actual hair,” Keith said, squinting at Leide’s head. Was his own hair really that much longer at the back? It was worrying to think that this might be what people were seeing when they looked at him. 

“Oh, yes, Keith,” Leide said earnestly. “I love your hairstyle! A lot of people are copying us - well, you, now, you know.”

“You’re a trendsetter!” Coran said, bustling in with the photographer and interviewer. He looked at them both side-by-side, Keith standing a head shorter than his supposed double, and added, “Somehow. Okay, Number Four, time for photos. Now, do _not_ smile. You’re the moody one.”

“I wasn’t going to smile,” Keith said. “I didn’t want to do this, remember?”

“Nonsense! We’re a smash hit, got to ride the wave! Everyone wants more of you and Shiro.”

“Where is Shiro?” Keith said. 

“He’s in wardrobe.”

Keith looked down at his regular paladin armour. “There’s wardrobe?”

“His real armour isn’t tight enough,” Coran said dismissively. “We’re all about giving the people what they want!”

Keith looked at Leide’s costume version of the armour, which was so tight Keith could pretty much see what he’d had for dinner. “Right, okay.”

“Put your arms over each other’s shoulders,” Coran ordered. “Now give me some of that Black Paladin charisma! No, Keith, more than that! Or any! Any at all would be good!”

“This will be my first front cover,” Leide said to Keith in a quick break while Coran was out seeing what was taking Shiro and Decen so long. “I used to read Stars Magazine every week when I was young. It’s so exciting!”

“Yeah?” Keith said. He thought the whole thing was stupid - didn’t the universe have other things to worry about? - but Leide’s innocent happiness was nice to see. He wasn’t too bright, but he seemed like a good kid. 

“Yes! Oh, here they are. Hi, Deke! You look good.”

“I thought you said Shiro was in wardrobe,” Keith managed. He didn’t see that there was much wardrobe needed for Shiro wearing only the skintight leggings that went under the armour and a scarlet blush. His actor looked much less self-conscious, despite that although he was clearly fit, his muscles were nowhere near the firm, functional bulk of Shiro’s broad chest and flat stomach and strong arm. (The other arm, with the energy gap, was proving difficult to copy: Coran had spent some time trying to convince Allura to build Shiro yet another one, with a complete upper arm, although once firmly rebuffed by both her and Shiro he’d moved on to trying to convince Keith to lend him the wolf to play himself, teleporting space pets apparently also being hard to fake.)

“I don’t want to wear this,” Shiro said, spotting the camera and trying to hide behind Keith. It didn’t really work, because there was a lot of Shiro to hide, but Keith did his best, stepping in the middle of the shot protectively. “Please, Coran. Let me just put my flight suit back on.”

“No!” Coran said, showbiz flames in his eyes. “This is perfect. You two sit down, and you Keiths go behind them, like we talked about.”

“Talked about when?” Keith said, bewildered.

Leide and Decen clearly _had_ been talked to, because Decen - whose white fringe was so bouffant Keith thought maybe it was a space pet itself - sat on the floor, legs spread in a way that seemed like it should’ve been illegal, pouting for the camera, and Leide immediately draped himself over him from behind, wrapping his arms around Decen’s shoulders and pressing their cheeks together. Their carefully made-up scars went together well. 

“No,” Keith squeaked, at the same time Shiro said, “ _Coran_.”

“Bee boh!” the photographer said encouragingly. 

“You’re burning daylight, boys!” Coran said. 

“Why is this the theme?” Keith protested. “What about… I don’t know, fighting evil? And lions? And teamwork?”

“This is what the people want!” Coran screamed and Keith shrank back. 

“Shiro,” Keith muttered. 

“Let’s just…” Shiro said, avoiding his gaze, and lowered himself to the floor next to Decen. 

“It really is what the people want,” Leide said, helpfully. “They write us lots of letters about it.”

“Oh my God,” Keith said, but Coran was fingering his clipboard like he was about to come over and slice Keith’s head right off with the short edge, and if everyone else was okay with it then whatever. 

Leide and Decen hadn’t needed any prompting to start cuddling up again and Keith tried to just copy what they were doing, going to stand behind Shiro and reaching for him gingerly. It wasn’t like they didn’t have contact usually, but a lot of the time there were space peril reasons. Having Shiro all half-naked and waiting to be touched in a nice, safe studio felt somehow like a luxury.

Shiro’s skin was soft under Keith’s hands. He realised he was smoothing his palms over Shiro’s shoulders, fingertips of his right hand coming into contact with the smooth prosthetic where they’d removed what had been left of Shiro’s arm to fully replace the Galran arm with the Altea-Earth hybrid tech, and stopped, embarrassed, watching goosebumps rise on Shiro’s skin where he’d touched him. Shiro rolled his shoulders into it, once, helplessly.

Keith took a deep breath and thought about that. Had anyone touched Shiro kindly since the surgery? Before that? He’d spent so long with no body at all, before he’d been crammed into this one. Unwillingly, Keith’s mind dragged back to the facility, the serene blanks of all the Shiro bodies there. He rested his hand on Shiro’s shoulder again, tentatively, let his fingertips map the craters of Shiro’s collarbone, pressing obligingly harder when Shiro giggled, ticklish.

He jerked when Coran called his name. Shiro hunched over too, shy again, and Keith rested his fingertips on the nape of Shiro’s neck, just below the fragile white of the short hair there, rubbing a little when Shiro pushed up into his hand like Kosmo wanting more petting.

“Very good, Keith! Just like that, but lean over him more. Get a bit closer. Closer! Like Leide and Deke are doing it.”

Leide and Deke looked like they were about to start making out: it was making Keith turn red just standing next to them. He bent a little closer to Shiro anyway, letting one hand slide down over the taut curve of his pecs, and after a moment’s hesitation Shiro brought up his human hand and cupped Keith’s head, cradled it, his fingers sliding into Keith’s hair. He tilted his head back to catch Keith’s eye and said, low, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Keith said. Shiro’s voice had settled him: a minute ago Shiro had been stressing about this himself, but that tone had had that gentle edge that said Shiro would do whatever it took to make Keith okay, and probably say thanks to Keith for the opportunity after, and that made all of this ridiculousness all right, something they’d laugh about later. It was just a little touching, a few photos.

“Closer, Keith!” Coran shouted, and he sighed and pressed himself all the way along Shiro’s back, snug and warm.

***

The letters filled _rooms_.

“Have you been watching it?” Shiro said. He pulled one off a full shelf and stared at it like he expected it to bite.

“No,” Keith said. “You?”

“No,” Shiro said. “I think maybe we better had.”

***

It was like an out of body experience. Firstly because Leide had actually gotten a bit better and seeing him re-enact stuff that had happened to them was freaky, and mostly because _they’d made him and Shiro boyfriends_ , and the embarrassment and horror of it made Keith wish he was far, far, far away.

“Um,” he said faintly. Onscreen Keith and Shiro were kissing, enthusiastically, which answered a lot of Keith’s questions about that photoshoot but brought up so very many more.

Shiro looked like if all his hair hadn’t already instantaneously turned white, it’d be doing so right now. “Well,” he said.

“We have to talk to Coran,” Keith said. “Why would he - why would people - I’m - _we’re_ not -”

“I know,” Shiro said. He was looking down, his face shadowed, but Keith could still see it doing the granite, pursed-lips thing it did when he was unhappy. “I know, Keith, I’m sorry. It’s - don’t worry about it, okay? I’ll talk to him. He can just… break us up, or something. Them up. It’ll all blow over.”

***

He filched the rest of the episodes off Lance (they all did: the password for every device he owned was ‘Allura’) and crept into Black’s hangar on Atlas to watch them. Some of it was pretty good: Coran had started to add plots, as well, but a lot of it was still based on things that had happened.

Apart from the obvious. He’d figured maybe Coran had just added it to jazz things up a little - and Shiro _should_ have someone, he deserved it, he was handsome and kind and brave and it had always baffled Keith how Lance could think _he_ was the one who was going to be Captain Kirking it round the galaxy when Shiro was _right there_ for all the hot alien dudes to see and anybody would be lucky beyond belief to get him - but… it didn’t even seem to matter? In most episodes they were just together, touching in the background, watching out for each other. The only thing that was really different from what Shiro and Keith actually did was that the TV versions kissed sometimes. Why did Coran even put it in there if he wasn’t going to use it?

He picked up another letter. People had written some really nice things about them.

***

“Were you surprised, when me and Shiro got together on the show?” he ventured to Pidge.

She gave him a pitying look. “No, Keith. Everyone’s known about you guys forever.”

It would’ve been nice if someone had told him, he thought resentfully.

***

“Keith?” Shiro called and Keith scrambled desperately for the remote, but of course Atlas just let Shiro in anywhere he wanted and all he’d managed to do was pause the episode incriminatingly on Shiro and Keith kissing by the time Shiro rounded Black’s paw. 

“Hi - oh,” Shiro said, flushing pink and trying really obviously not to look at the screen. And that was it, right, this was why they _weren’t_ together: Shiro went after the things he wanted, and the essential truth of it, what made Keith flat inside to think about, was that he’d never gone after Keith.

Keith liked this episode. It was easier, kinder than what had really happened. Keith had never told anyone else more than the barest sketch of their fight at the clone facility, and he never would, so Coran had had to work with the brief facts that were clear to everyone around them. It was just a flashback, meant to explain why Allura had built Shiro’s new arm, only a couple of minutes long, but Keith liked to watch it in the background when he was doing other stuff. Leide and Deke were good in it, and they kissed right at the end of the flashback like they’d really needed to.

“I was just,” he said, but every way he could think of for ending the sentence was worse than the last so he just let it trail off. 

“I watched the rest too,” Shiro admitted and came to sit next to Keith. “Before I talked to Coran.”

“What did he say?” Keith asked. 

“He said that magazine cover of us was the best selling they’d ever had,” Shiro said wryly. “He didn’t… really seem to get what the problem was. I’ll try again.”

“Right,” Keith said. 

Shiro leaned forward and pressed play and Keith sneaked a look at him as they watched TV-Keith and TV-Shiro hugging in front of a backdrop of the black lion landing in front of a burning Galra clone facility to pick them up. 

Shiro was smiling, sort of. He said, “Well, there’s one thing they missed, I suppose. Which would explain how they got it so wrong.”

“Shiro,” Keith said, stricken. He’d never known how much Shiro had in his own memory of the clone being taken over by Haggar. He’d hoped nothing.

“I remember it all,” Shiro said. “He was… almost gone, by then. But there was a thread of the connection to the black lion. I think she thought she was helping.”

“So you remember -”

“ _You’re my brother_ ,” Shiro murmured. His mouth was still all twisted up, and Keith didn’t know why, apart from he thought maybe he did, he just didn’t know how to _fix it_. “Kind of an important part of the puzzle to be missing.”

“You remember the rest?” Keith said, desperate. He caught Shiro’s face in his palm, rubbed his thumb over Shiro’s cheekbone, watching Shiro’s eyes slide closed and his mouth tremble. “What are you thinking? I don’t have anyone writing me a damn script, I didn’t mean… I don’t have the words for what you are to me, Shiro.”

“You don’t have to,” Shiro said. 

He didn’t kiss Keith, and Keith didn’t kiss him. They just were kissing, both of them moving into it together, sudden and sure and sweet, and Shiro was right: Keith didn’t need words, or anything else but this.

***

“You boys make such a cute couple!” an old Balmeran lady cooed at them while they were grabbing a bite at Vrepit Sal’s; it was a pretty idiosyncratic interpretation of tacos, but it seemed to be going down great with the shoppers at the swap meet. “Do you mind?” She pushed Stars Magazine at them hopefully, the one with the front cover of the two of them snuggled up, next to the guys who played them on TV. 

Keith grinned at Shiro over the table; Shiro was looking back at him, his eyes soft, and Keith reached for his hand at the same time he took the pen from her and said, “Sure, why not?”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://concernedlily.tumblr.com)!


End file.
